page_title: Jungian archetypes
hierarchical_section_title: Jungian archetypes
caption_attribution_description: English: Gregory Peck publicity photo for the film To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962
context_page_description: Jungian archetypes are defined as universal, archaic symbols and images that derive from the collective unconscious, as proposed by Carl Jung. They are the psychic counterpart of instinct. That is to say they are a kind of innate unspecific knowledge, derived from the sum total of human history, which prefigures and directs conscious behavior.
  They are unclear underlying forms, or the archetypes-as-such, from which emerge images and motifs such as the mother, the child, the trickster, and the flood among others. History, culture and personal context shape these manifest representations thereby giving them their specific content. These images and motifs are more precisely called archetypal images. However it is common for the term archetype to be used interchangeably to refer to both archetypes-as-such and archetypal images.
  Archetypes, according to Jung, seek actualization within the context of an individual's environment and determine the degree of individuation.
context_section_description: Jungian archetypes are defined as universal, archaic symbols and images that derive from the collective unconscious, as proposed by Carl Jung. They are the psychic counterpart of instinct. That is to say they are a kind of innate unspecific knowledge, derived from the sum total of human history, which prefigures and directs conscious behavior.
  They are unclear underlying forms, or the archetypes-as-such, from which emerge images and motifs such as the mother, the child, the trickster, and the flood among others. History, culture and personal context shape these manifest representations thereby giving them their specific content. These images and motifs are more precisely called archetypal images. However it is common for the term archetype to be used interchangeably to refer to both archetypes-as-such and archetypal images.
  Archetypes, according to Jung, seek actualization within the context of an individual's environment and determine the degree of individuation. For example, the mother archetype is actualized in the mind of the child by the evoking of innate anticipations of the maternal archetype when the child is in the proximity of a maternal figure who corresponds closely enough to its archetypal template. This mother archetype is built into the personal unconscious of the child as a mother complex. Complexes are functional units of the personal unconscious, in the same way that archetypes are units for the collective unconscious.
  Critics have accused Jung of metaphysical essentialism. Since archetypes are defined so vaguely and since archetypal images are an essentially infinite variety of everyday phenomena, they are neither generalizable nor specific in a way that may be researched or demarcated with any kind of rigor. Hence they elude systematic study. Feminist critiques have focused on aspects that are seen as being reductionistic and provide a stereotyped view of femininity and masculinity. Other critics respond that archetypes do nothing more than to solidify the cultural prejudices of the interpreter. Modern scholarship with its emphasis on power and politics have seen archetypes as a colonial device to level the specifics of individual cultures and their stories in the service of grand abstraction.
caption: Character Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird, named the greatest movie hero of all time by the American Film Institute,[1] fulfills in terms of archetypes three roles: the father,[2] the hero,[3] and the idealist.[citation needed]
exif: {}